German Museums that do NOT publish Nazi-era provenance online as of March 23 2022

According to our tests, the following German museums are rated "F" (FAIL) for transparency concerning the ownership history of artworks in the Nazi-period 1933-1945.

This means that a visitor to the museum's online collections website cannot see where a painting was or who owned it during the Nazi period.

(Please help us to update this list as museum websites evolve.)

• Neue Pinakothek in Munich

There is a field "Herkunft". However it does not give the ownership history. It only states who sold, gave or loaned it to the museum. There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

• Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

There is no ownership history. There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

 

• Lenbachhaus

There is a field "Zugang". However it does not give the ownership history. It only states who sold, gave or loaned it to the museum.  There is no link to or mention of Lostart, Linz or Munich Collecting point information. 

WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-MUSEUM & FONDATION CORBOUD

No real online collections database, no provenance on the Wallraf-Richartz website - not even for iconic works like Asparagus (about whose Nazi-era provenance artist Hans Haacke famously did an entire exhibition). To find information about the history of artworks one must go to LostArt.de or plunge into Immunity from Seizure documents. And yet, provenance research projects have been announced with great fanfare. But whatever the results are, they do not appear to be on the website.

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Pinakothek Munich: artworks with no provenance transferred from the German state

Where to find the provenance of artworks held at the Pinakothek in Bavaria, Germany?

Not, it seems, on the Pinakothek website.

Frequently, the information provided in the Origin or Herkunft field limits itself to the mention: "on loan" or "transferred from the German state".

But there is no link or reference to any further information. 

Yet we know that many looted artworks returned to Germany after the war and then distributed to museums "on loan" or as "transfers").

How to verify whether or not an artwork held at the Pinakothek is referenced in the LostArt.de database, the DHM Munich or Linz databases?

To find out, we will look at a selection of artworks at the Pinakothek, many of which are "on loan" or transferred from State possession.

See file here 

Download CSV here

(please note: The dataset contains only a few hundred artworks out of the more than 8000 artworks created before 1940 that contain the word "Überweisung")

https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/search?phrase=Überweisung#filters={"yearRange":{"min":1400,"max":1940},"onDisplay":false,"publicDomain":false}

Gurlitt: The scandal continues

When an art historian sees the Gurlitt name in any text, the first thought should be: is it a lie?

CIR 4 LINZ S. Lane Faison describes Hitler's Linz museum as "a monument to Safe Art"

From June 1945 until the spring of 1946, Faison, Plaut, and Rousseau detained and interrogated hundreds of Nazi officials and collaborators on the whereabouts of looted works of art. - Monuments Men Foundation

"Special Nazi law covered the seizure of Jewish and enemy property." - CIR 4 Chapter IX Conclusions and Recommendations

 "Special Nazi law covered the seizure of Jewish and enemy property."

Excerpt from Art Looting Investigation Unit Consolidated Interrogation Report Number 4: Linz